


The Courage of Stars

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet, Canon Timeline, Closure, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Relationship, Tarot, hopeful mourning, if that's a thing, spoilers for 117
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Yasha hadn't known there was a card for each of them, and now she can't rest until she knows which one was for her.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre & Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha
Comments: 12
Kudos: 192





	The Courage of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Got to thinking with Ethereal_Bear about what card Molly might have made for Yasha, and once I had the idea I couldn't let it go. So two posts in one day. Why not!

Yasha hesitated before knocking on Jester's door, taking a moment to steel herself and think it through for the third time in as many minutes. It was okay, wasn't it? To ask? Molly would have told her, she was almost certain. Especially had he known he would shortly be unable to. And having seen his body today without him in it…she needed this.

She knocked and pushed the door open gently at Jester's exuberant "come in!" She was sitting in the middle of her bed, and stretched out like a cat along the foot of it was Beau, looking startled to see her. "Hi, Yasha!" Jester called, making the both of them jump and breaking their awkward eye contact.

"Hi," Yasha said softly. "I'm sorry it's late, but I…I had a question. About the deck?"

Jester wiggled her eyebrows. "Want me to draw a card for you?"

She could feel Beau not looking at her, which meant she was seeing that much more. She didn't like to be observed watching. "Not exactly," Yasha said. "I don't…that kind of thing should come up more naturally, I think." She took a deep breath. "You said he drew a card for all of us."

Now Beau _was_ looking at her, and Jester blinked in surprise for a moment. "Of course! Let me just -" she hauled her bag up from the floor and reached in to grope for a second.

Yasha met Beau's eyes, saw the grappling in her mind behind them. "Stay?" she asked.

Beau relaxed - or at least took on a posture of a different kind of stress - but either way she nodded in relief. "'Course." Yasha smiled gratefully to her, and Beau flushed and looked away. 

Jester sat her bag back on the floor and looked at the cards in her hands, looking suddenly embarrassed. "I just realized I didn't ask you how you were, earlier," she said. She scooted further down the bed and patted the open space up top, and Beau sat up to sit cross-legged so there was ample room.

"That's okay." Yasha climbed up and folded her legs underneath her, taking a moment to settle into the soft blankets. "I don't know that I would have had an answer. Honestly," she said, looking down and her lap and scratching lightly at a callous on her palm, "I'm still not certain."

Jester nodded and let the cards spill before them in the quiet light of the floating orbs. "If you think of answer, you can tell me or Beau," she said. Yasha didn't miss the way Beau's spine straightened the smallest bit, but Jester was using her fingers to lightly shake the cards apart and didn't take note. "For now let's see which one of these might be for you," she said.

There was no need to search. Yasha saw it immediately. Among the colors and the carefully depicted scenes - how many times had she seen these without really looking at them? - there was a card in stark black and white. Not white, exactly, she saw as she used a finger to pull it gently from the deck. A kind of cream color. The color of bone.

And that was apt, because the image depicted was a relatively simple skull. Yasha might not have known exactly what kind of skull it was other than "bird," but as Molly had drawn these, it was not at all difficult to guess it was from the Roc she had slain in her first month with the circus.

She traced her fingers over the illustration. There was some color to it, she saw now that it was tugged free. The skull rested on a small bed of purple wildflowers, of the sort they had seen while traveling through the fields of Zadash. The black, on closer examination, seemed to be made up of purples and blues and reds layered and mixed intensely. It was easy, too easy to imagine him quietly working on these during watch on one of those countless nights she had been called away by the Storm Lord.

"What is this one?" she asked, looking up to see Jester watching her with her brow knit.

"Death," she said.

Yasha looked back down at the card, aware of the glance Jester and Beau traded before they both looked back to her. "It's perfect," she murmured.

"It's…pretty badass," Beau agreed, but she sounded doubtful.

Yasha caught the tone and looked up between them. "Do you know this one?"

Beau shrugged. "Seems kind of self-explanatory?"

Jester looked even more thoughtful, and then she brightened. "I do remember!" She gasped. "Yasha, this is such a good card for you!"

Yasha smiled. "I remember Molly saying that people were afraid of it for the wrong reasons," she said. "I understand that to a degree. What does it mean?"

Jester's hands flapped a little in excitement. "It's a card about new beginnings! Like old things dying that maybe you were used to but that you can't take with you in your next chapter, but are still hard to let go of. It's like…pain that makes you better, or something. Like you have to hurt to heal."

"Oh," said Yasha. She held the card lightly on the fingertips of her cupped hands and watched the skull blur as her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Her smile didn't waver, but her voice did. "I already knew he saw me better than I saw myself." She laughed a little. "This empty shell of a person, terrified by a stiff breeze, and he would hide in my shawl even though I was a much bigger threat than…a lot of things, at that time." She was vaguely aware that this was the most words she'd probably spoken since it had just been him and her. He'd always brought it out of her, but only when they were alone. Even Molly's charm had its limits.

Still, trust him to pull her words out of her from beyond the grave.

Yasha rubbed a thumb gently over the tear that splashed into the eye of the skull and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"He knew more than he let on," Beau said quietly. She smiled a little. "Bastard."

Yasha's responding laugh was choked and wet. "Always," she said, wiping at her eyes with the heel of a hand. "If he knew how right he was…he'd be insufferable." Her voice cracked hard now, and she couldn't keep her smile up. "I wouldn't mind."

"Yash," Beau whispered sadly.

And that was all it took. The ache in Beau's voice for the feelings Yasha herself hadn't yet been able to look at directly brought them roaring to the forefront with sudden ferocity, and there was nothing she could do to stop the tears. Yasha bent her head and sobbed with an overwhelming rush of sorrow that seemed to power through her, flooding her heart and leaving her feeling raw and somehow clean where it touched. It was mostly grief, yes, so much of it. But she had learned a long time ago that grief was just what happened when love didn't have anywhere to go anymore, and she had loved Mollymauk Tealeaf _so very much._

"Yasha?" Jester's voice was tentative. "Can we hug you?"

She nodded, shoulders shaking, and the bed shifted around her just before she felt Jester's arms around her neck and Beau's solid warmth pressed against her side, chin on Yasha's shoulder. She let herself feel held, touched the card and closed her eyes, crying more gently now. The card's image was there in her mind and made her feel like he'd just hugged her too, the soft and earnest squeeze that few people guessed someone as loud as him would be capable of. But that was just it - he gave hugs according to who needed them how, and he had seen the care Yasha was starving for long before she had. His body had never felt like a home to him, but it had brought him no end of joy to let it be hers.

If he could see her now…

Gods, she thought. He'd be so proud.


End file.
